The Iraqi people, braving car bombs and waving ink-stained
fingers, demonstrated that Ted is more than a bit "tetched," to use the
colloquial term. Iraqis weren't going to miss the chance to damn Saddam's
legacy of theft, murder, thuggery and war.

Beltway political experts explain Kennedy's action as a tactical
political gamble. See, Bay, ole Ted was simply staking out political
territory. If the Iraqi elections failed --as the conventional media wisdom
said they would -- he was positioned to "take the moral high ground" from
the Bush administration. "Moral high ground," accompanied by appropriate
friendly media magnification, would translate into the political power to
dominate the Bush administration.

Jan. 30 was crunch time for the people of Iraq. The War on
Terror is crunch time for the 21st century. We are living in a moment that
really matters, when blood, sweat, toil and tears fueled by hope and courage
can lay the political foundation for a more just and prosperous century.

With the exception of Joe Lieberman, the Democratic Party's
senior leaders have either vacillated in their support or been dead wrong
about Iraq. This doesn't bode well for the United States. Last July, I met
Lieberman at a reception in Baghdad. I told him I wished he were the
Democratic nominee for president. He smiled wryly and said he wished he was,
too.

Lieberman gets it. He understands the stakes and appreciates the
risks, but he also understands the opportunities. He's an armed liberal in
the tradition of Harry Truman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt -- and, for that
matter, John Kennedy.

America needs the Democratic Party of Truman and FDR -- and
that's a party willing to drop A-bombs and "bear any price" for freedom on
the planet. Instead, the Democratic National Committee infects itself with
Mad How disease, the political bacillus spread by Park Avenue's Typhoid Mary
of ulcerous anger, "Mad How"-ard Dean.

This is a serious strategic illness. Symptoms include lack of
spine, especially when sustaining international action to defeat tyranny and
terror. There are some humorous side-effects: As the disease progresses
leftward, particularly among bi-coastal and academic elites, a desire to
recast America as France emerges.

The more extreme manifestations include activist nostalgia for
1960s narco-politics, where gray-haired profs with ponytails rant about --
you guessed it -- "quagmires" and "Vietnam."

"Left-wing denial" has become a redundant phrase, just like
"left-wing defeatism." Remember, Afghanistan was supposed to be a quagmire.
Millions would die in the harsh Himalayan winter. Instead, U.S. forces and
Afghan allies quickly drove the Taliban from power and Al Qaeda's claim to
"divine sanction" for its war against America went poof. The October 2004
Afghan election ratified the victory.

The Vietnam War -- so costly and destructive -- was strategic
defense, a Cold War attempt to buy time while avoiding nuclear conflict
until the Soviet Union "mellowed," to use George Kennan's phrase.

Iraq, like Afghanistan, is part of a strategic political and
military offensive directed at the dictators and genocidal ideologues whose
design for the 21st century is 12th century autocracy imposed by death
squads, men in turbans and nukes.

China's Mao Tse-Tung wrote that guerrillas are fish swimming in
the sea of the people. Translation: It takes popular support to sustain a
genuine guerrilla conflict. The Saddmist thugs and Al Qaeda zealots who kill
Iraqi civilians and coalition troops are reactionaries with scant political
appeal. They are murderers, not soldiers in a wider people's war.

Check the ink-stained fingers -- the Iraqi elections
demonstrated just how politically marginal these fascists are.

Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean can't hear that, can't see that.
Saddled with defeatism and blinded by cynicism, their old-time '60s
political religion is now the quagmire.